


a curious morbidity

by Anonymous



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11718411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Winning can convince you everything is fine, even if you are on the brink of disaster.





	a curious morbidity

**Author's Note:**

> **The following contains brief mentions of depression, suicidal ideation, and disordered eating.** Exit now if you do not wish to encounter this.
> 
> These seven drabbles were written for a 'Viktor Week' on Tumblr and were originally posted there. 
> 
> "Losing can persuade you to change what doesn’t need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster."  
> \-- Garry Kasparov, _How Life Imitates Chess_

  _i. food  
_

Food was a luxury; one of the few aspects of his life over which he had total control.

Every competition might have been his swansong; every practice might have led to the aggravation of an old injury. His body was flimsily stitched together, but it was an instrument, needing to be tuned.

So he knew exactly what he was putting into his body; a comforting certainty. The number of calories. The respective amounts of fat, carbohydrates, protein. Adding and subtracting the numbers, a religious paranoia. And the burning in his throat, when he slipped up.

He held his weaknesses close.

...

_ii. beginnings/past_

Victor wasn’t afraid, then. He had the looks, the starry-eyed determination. This was the kind of immortality he wanted.

_I like to surprise people._

When Victor achieved his quixotic ideal, he became drunk on the seductive taste of success. The roar of the audience’s adulation, the weight of gold. And maybe he was also in love with this concept of himself, the magic that was woven into his name and costumes.

But when inspiration ebbed and triumph became expected, Victor found that he couldn’t quite wash it off. His carefully-crafted persona clung to his skin. 

A facsimile, like costume mesh.

...

_iii. skating_

He can see the jump in his mind, like a movie replayed a thousand times. The axes of the body. The angle of the landing. A three-turn on the left foot, switch to the inside edge. Reach back with the right leg, strike down on the ice. (It sprays like confetti.)

Body solid. Hands over his heart.

Dancers try to mimic flight, but they say skaters actually fly. That heartbeat of suspension, losing the world in a blur—

Four revolutions, and down on his right blade. (He feels the excruciating weight, but this pain’s worth at least 12.3 points.)

...

_iv. family/friends_

Victor was, after all, capricious to a fault. Victor had liked Yuri Plisetsky well enough when the boy surprised him: the shy little Moscow student jumping quads like hopscotch. The prevailing stubbornness, the funnel-vision determination, tied with a rosette of bratty attitude.

And ultimately, Victor was delighted by unusual things. Like his programs, he swooped down on them and reimagined them and pushed them over their limits, until they morphed into something new and otherworldly, like impossible geometry, or materialised dreams.

To Victor, Yuri had been a breath of fresh air. But somehow, along the way, Yuri had become predictable.

...

_v. victory_

He was made for this; the elegance, the glamour, the ecstasy, the tragedy. He held the audience’s captivation in his practised hands — _let your wrists flow, Vitya, extend the line of your arms, just so_ — and he seduced them with the darkness they could not see.

He’d always known how to win, but no one taught him how to lose. A shame, because the higher he stood, the greater was the fall. Height was but contingent on the ice he took off from.

The solution was simple: all he had to do was win, and win, and win.

...

_vi. emotions_

He sees the world in greyscale and the days collapse into a blur. Wake up, eat, run, on-ice practice, off-ice training, ballet, repeat, sleep. The pursuit of perfection is costly, but not too high for him.

And maybe he blinks on the ice and finds himself cold and numb. Maybe it’s painless when the skate blade cuts his hand, red dripping onto white; an impromptu watercolour painting. When he has a fear of approaching trains, not because of what it could do to him, but what he could do to himself. Sometimes he wonders, for the sake of the art.

...

_vii. (free)_

He thought his troubles would end when he met someone who made his heart start again in double time. That this new reason for living would save him, and vanquish the monsters inside his head. 

The world paints itself in colour again. He didn’t realise it would only delineate the darkness more, when it struck.

The middle of the nights were the most terrifying. When no one else was awake, and the uncertainty twisted in his chest. But now he can turn to the one beside him. Hold on. Force the doubts into nothing.

It’s only darkest before the dawn.


End file.
